Many Hands on the Rope

And it is of men like these that it is said: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; I will bring to nothing the understanding of the intelligent.” The apostle accordingly adds: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?” — setting the philosophers of the nations over against the scribes as the debaters of this age. “Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish?” — which comes to the same thing as saying that he showed it to be foolish, and not true, as they had supposed. And if you ask what caused their apparent wisdom, he will say: “because of the blindness of their heart.” [a]

For it was “in the wisdom of God” — that is, in the wisdom proclaimed by the prophets — that “the world did not know” “him,” meaning God. “It pleased God, through the foolishness of what was proclaimed” — foolishness is what it looked like to the Greeks — “to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs,” before they will trust, “and Greeks look for wisdom,” plainly meaning the arguments they call irresistible, and syllogisms besides. “But we proclaim Christ crucified: to Jews a stumbling block” — because, though they knew the prophecy, they did not believe it when it happened — “and to Greeks foolishness.” For men who count themselves wise think it a fable that the Son of God should speak through a man, and that God should have a Son at all, and above everything that this Son should have suffered. So their settled idea of the matter tips them toward disbelief. For the Savior’s coming did not make people foolish and hard of heart and unbelieving. It made them understanding, open to persuasion, believing. Those who would not believe cut themselves off from the willing agreement of the ones who obeyed, and so were shown up as men without understanding, unbelievers and fools. “But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Should we not rather take the words “Has God not made the wisdom of the world foolish?” as a denial — “God has not made the wisdom of the world foolish” — so that the cause of their hardness of heart may not seem to have come from God, “making the wisdom of the world foolish”? For being wise, they are on every count the more to blame for not believing the proclamation. Preferring the truth and choosing it is something a man does willingly. But that declaration, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,” says that he sent out light, by bringing forward against them the barbarian philosophy that men despise and think nothing of — the way a lamp is said to be put out when the sun shines on it, because it no longer has the same power. All men have been called; those who are willing to obey have been given the name “the called.” For there is no injustice with God. Those of either race who have believed are “a people of his own.” And in the Acts of the Apostles you will find this, word for word: “So those who received his word were baptized” — while those who would not obey held themselves apart. To such men prophecy says: “If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land.” This proves that the choosing and the refusing rest with us.

The apostle calls the teaching that is according to the Lord “the wisdom of God,” in order to show that the true philosophy has been handed over to us by the Son. Further, the man who has a show of wisdom has certain instructions laid on him by the apostle: “that you put on the new man, who is made new after God in righteousness and true holiness. So, putting away lying, let each of you speak the truth. Do not give the devil a foothold. Let the thief steal no longer, but rather let him work, doing what is good” — and to work is to labor at the search for truth, since that labor goes together with doing good by reason — “so that you may have something to give to anyone in need,” in need both of worldly money and of divine wisdom. For he wants both things: that the word be taught, and that the money be laid on the banker’s table, tested and found true, so that it gathers interest. And so he adds: “Let no rotten word come out of your mouth” — the rotten word being the one that comes out of conceit — “but only what is good for building up where there is need, so that it gives grace to those who hear.” And the word of the good God must of course be good. How could the one who saves not be good?

Since, then, the Greeks are on record as having laid down some true opinions, we may take our look at the evidence from this point on. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, is reported to have said to the men of the Areopagus: “I see that in every way you are more religious than most. For as I went along and looked at the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription: To an Unknown God. What you worship without knowing it, that is what I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by hands, and is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all life and breath and everything. From one blood he made every nation of men, to live over the whole face of the earth; and he fixed the times appointed for them and the boundaries of where they live, so that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him — though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being; as some of your own poets have also said: For we too are his offspring.” From this it is plain that the apostle, by making use of examples from the poetry of Aratus’s Phenomena, gives his approval to what the Greeks said well. He also lets us see that by the unknown God the Greeks were worshiping God the Creator in a roundabout way, but that they had to lay hold of him by knowing him outright, and learn him through the Son. “That is why I am sending you to the nations,” it says, “to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those made holy by faith in me.” These, then, are the eyes of the blind that are opened. Knowing the Father through the Son is the grasping of the “Greek roundabout way”; and to turn from the power of Satan is to turn away from sin, which was what produced the slavery. [k]

We do not, of course, take in every philosophy without qualification, but only the kind Socrates speaks of in Plato: “For there are, as they say in the mysteries, many who carry the thyrsus, but few who are truly bacchants” — meaning that many are called, but few are chosen. And he plainly adds: “These, in my opinion, are none other than the men who have practiced philosophy rightly. To be one of their number I have left nothing undone in my life, as far as I could, but have tried every way there is. Whether I tried rightly, and whether I achieved anything, I shall know for certain when I have gone there, God willing, a little while from now.” Does he not seem, then, to be declaring out of the Hebrew Scriptures the righteous man’s hope, through faith, after death?

And in the Demodocus — if that piece is really Plato’s work — he says: “And do not suppose that I call it philosophizing to spend one’s life fiddling with the arts, or learning a great many things. It is something else; for I, at any rate, would count that a disgrace.” He knew, I reckon, that knowing many things does not educate the mind, as Heraclitus says. And in the fifth book of the Republic he says: “‘Shall we then call all these men philosophers, and the others who study such things, and those who take up the meaner crafts?’ ‘By no means,’ I said, ‘but men like philosophers.’ ‘And whom,’ he said, ‘do you call the true ones?’ ‘Those,’ I said, ‘who take delight in the contemplation of truth. For philosophy is not in geometry, with its assumptions and hypotheses; nor in music, which goes by guesswork; nor in astronomy, which is stuffed full of physical and fluid and probable causes. What is wanted is the knowledge of the good itself and of truth itself — the good being one thing, and the roads to the good another.’” So he does not allow that the standard course of studies is enough to make a man good; it only works alongside, rousing and training the soul toward the things the mind takes in.

Now suppose someone says that the Greeks gave out some utterances of the true philosophy by accident. It was the accident of a divine ordering — for nobody, merely to win the present argument with us, is going to make a god out of chance. Or suppose he says it was good fortune: good fortune is not something unforeseen. Or if, on the other hand, someone says the Greeks had a natural conception of these things, we know the one Creator of nature — just as we also call righteousness natural. Or if he says they had an intelligence in common, let us stop and ask who its father is, and what righteousness amounts to in the ordering of the mind. And if a man were to name “speaking beforehand,” and set down “speaking together” as its cause, he is naming forms of prophecy. Others, again, will have it that the philosophers uttered some truths only in appearance.

The divine apostle writes about us accordingly: “For now we see through a mirror.” We know ourselves in it by reflection, and at the same time we contemplate, as far as we are able, the cause that made us, from what is divine in ourselves. For it is said, “You have seen your brother; you have seen your God.” It is the Savior God, I think, who is declared to us in this way now. But after the flesh is laid aside it is “face to face” — then it is definite, and takes in everything, once the heart has become pure. And by reflection, and by looking straight at him, those among the Greeks who have done their philosophy accurately do see God. Such, through our weakness, are the true views we get: images seen in water, and things seen through clear and transparent bodies.

Excellently, then, Solomon says: “The one who sows righteousness works up faith.” “And there are those who, sowing what is their own, make it more.” And again: “Take care of the green growth on the plain, and you will cut grass and gather in ripe hay, so that you may have sheep for clothing.” You see how care has to be taken for clothing on the outside, and for keeping what one has. “And you will know intelligently the souls of your flock.” “For when the nations, who do not have the law, do by nature the things the law requires, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves” — uncircumcision keeping the law’s requirements — as the apostle says, and that both before the law and before the Lord’s coming.

As if setting men devoted to philosophy side by side with the men called sectarians, the Word says most clearly: “Better a friend who is near than a brother who lives far away.” “And the man who leans on lies feeds on winds and chases birds on the wing.” I do not think philosophy declares the Word outright, though in many instances philosophy attempts it and teaches us persuasively by probable arguments; but it does assail the sects. And so it is added: “For he has forsaken the ways of his own vineyard, and has wandered off in the tracks of his own farming.” Such are the sects that deserted the original church. Now the man who has fallen into a sect passes through a dry wilderness. He abandons the only true God; he is left without God; he seeks waterless water; he arrives at an uninhabited and thirsty land, and gathers barrenness with his hands.

And to those with no good sense — that is, to those tangled up in the sects — Wisdom gives her instruction, saying: “Touch with pleasure the bread that is stolen, and the sweet water of theft.” Scripture is plainly applying the words bread and water to nothing else than those sects which use bread and water in their offering, and not according to the rule of the church. For there are people who celebrate the thanksgiving with water alone. “But be gone; do not stay in her place.” The place is the synagogue, not the church; he calls it by that ambiguous word, place. Then he adds: “For so you will pass through the water of another” — counting the sects’ baptism as water neither proper nor true. “And you will cross another man’s river,” the one that rushes along and sweeps down into the sea; into which a man is flung when he has swerved from the steadiness that goes with truth, and rushes back into the heathen and stormy waves of life.

When many men haul a ship down to the water, they cannot be called many causes; they are one cause made up of many, since no one of them by himself is the cause of the ship’s being hauled, but only along with the rest. In the same way philosophy, being the search for truth, contributes to the grasping of truth. It is not the cause of that grasp, but a cause along with other things, and a fellow worker — perhaps also a joint cause. And just as the several virtues are causes of one man’s happiness, and just as the sun and the fire and the bath and clothing are all causes of one man’s getting warm, so, while truth is one, many things contribute to the search for it. But its discovery is through the Son. [ac]

If we think it through, virtue in its power is one thing. But it happens that when it shows itself in some matters it is called prudence, in others sober-mindedness, in others courage or righteousness. By the same analogy, while truth is one, in geometry there is the truth of geometry, in music the truth of music, and in a right philosophy there will be a Greek truth. But the only authentic truth, the one that cannot be assaulted, is the truth we are taught by the Son of God. In the same way we say that the drachma, being one and the same coin, is called the fare when it is given to a ship’s captain, the tax when it is given to the tax collector, the rent when it is given to a landlord, the fee when it is given to a teacher, and the deposit when it is given to a seller. And each of them, whether it is virtue or truth, though called by the same name, is the cause of its own particular effect and of nothing else; and out of the blending of them comes a happy life. For we are not made happy by names alone, when we say that a good life is happiness and that the man whose soul is adorned with virtue is happy.

But if philosophy contributes to the discovery of truth at a distance — reaching, by one attempt after another, toward the knowledge that touches close upon the truth, the knowledge we ourselves possess — then it helps the man who is aiming at grasping it, in accordance with the Word, to lay hold of knowledge. Yet the Greek truth is a different thing from the truth we hold, although it has got the same name: different in the extent of what it knows, in the certainty of its demonstration, in divine power, and the like. For we are taught by God, instructed in the truly “sacred letters” by the Son of God. So the men we are speaking of do influence souls, but not the way we do; their teaching is another thing. And if, for the sake of people who are fond of finding fault, we must draw a distinction, then let us say that philosophy is a concurrent and cooperating cause of true apprehension, being the search for truth, and let us admit that it is a preparatory training for the one who truly knows. We are not naming as the cause what is only a joint cause, nor as the sustaining cause what is merely cooperative, nor giving philosophy the place of something without which nothing could happen at all. For nearly all of us, without training in arts and sciences, and without Greek philosophy — some without any schooling whatever — have received the word about God through faith, by the working of a philosophy that is divine and barbarian, and by power, having been trained by a wisdom that works of itself. But a thing that acts in company with something else, and is of itself incapable of acting alone, we describe as cooperating and as a joint cause. We say that it becomes a cause only in virtue of being a joint cause, and that it gets the name of cause only in respect of its concurring with something else, and that by itself it cannot produce the proper effect.

There was a time, though, when philosophy counted the Greeks righteous, without bringing them to that complete righteousness toward which it is found to cooperate — in the way the first and second flights of stairs help you up to the room above, and the way the grammar teacher helps the philosopher. Not that, if you took philosophy away, the perfect Word would be left incomplete, or the truth would perish; since sight and hearing and the voice contribute to truth too, and yet it is the mind that is the faculty proper to knowing it. But of the things that cooperate, some contribute more power and some less. Clarity, then, helps in getting truth across, and logic helps in keeping us from falling to the sects that come at us. But the teaching that is according to the Savior is complete in itself and has no defect, being “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Greek philosophy does not, by coming near, make the truth more powerful; but by rendering the assault of sophistry powerless against it, and by frustrating the treacherous plots laid against the truth, it is said to be the proper “fence and wall of the vineyard.” And the truth that comes by faith is as necessary for living as bread, while the preparatory discipline is like a relish and a sweet.

as Pindar of Thebes says. And Scripture has expressly said: “The innocent man will become wiser by understanding, and the wise man will take in knowledge.” “And the one who speaks from himself,” says the Lord, “is looking for his own glory; but the one who looks for the glory of him who sent him is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” On the other side, therefore, the man who takes what belongs to the barbarians and boasts of it as his own does wrong, increasing his own glory and falsifying the truth. It is a man like this whom Scripture calls a thief. And so it is said: “Son, do not become a liar, for lying leads on to theft.” All the same, the thief really does possess what he has taken dishonestly, whether it is gold, or silver, or speech, or teaching. So the ideas they have stolen, which are partly true, they know by guesswork and by logic they could not avoid; but when they become disciples, they will know them with intelligent understanding.